When it’s fig season, we eat figs all the TIME! Adding figs in my salad has become my new favorite treat and this salad is a match made in heaven. Peppery arugula, bitter radicchio, sweet figs, and creamy goat cheese pair so well together!

Radicchio, Fig, Arugula Salad with Goat Cheese & Pine Nuts

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Coarse salt and ground pepper

3 cups baby arugula

1 head radicchio, halved, cored, and cut into 1 1/2-inch-wide strips

1/2 pound ripe fresh figs (about 8), stemmed and quartered

2 oz Goat cheese, crumbled

1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted

Directions

In a small bowl, whisk together oil and vinegar; season with salt and pepper.

In a large serving bowl combine the arugula, radicchio, figs, goat cheese, and pine nuts.

10 minutes before serving, add the dressing, toss to coat salad and serve.

Say What?! We are beyond excited that Bon Appetit came out with the 2017 awards of the year. If you are unfamiliar with these awards some examples are dish of the year, cuisine of the year, and more. We are so excited to say that they awarded Chicory as the vegetable of the year! They describe chicories as “a family of hardy, pleasantly bitter, multihued lettuces”. This is on point! Read full post

Let’s get into the details. Chicory, cichorium intybus, is a perennial plant in the dandelion family and they grow wild in Europe, North America and Austrialia. There are several varieties that are cultivated for salad leaves like radicchio, escarole, and endive. There are many varieties of radicchio out there as well. Radicchio di chioggia has a round head with a deep red and white veins, this is the most common and can be found in many retail stores. Treviso is the elongated version of chioggia and slightly less bitter to taste. Lastly, Castelfranco is round with butter-cream and red-speckled leaves. Now that you know what Chicory is, check out some of our favorite Bon Appetit’s recipes.

Pizza Time! What’s better than a delicious cheesy pizza? A pizza with radicchio!! We have two pizza recipes for your next pizza night. First one is a pizza with sausage and sautéed onions and radicchio. This pizza a match made in heaven! Don’t be shy with the amount of radicchio. Our second pizza is a healthy option (well healthy-ish). We have a pizza salad! This pizza is a light cheese pizza topped with an arugula radicchio salad with a classic garlicy vinaigrette.

If you don’t want to buy dough from a store, here is a link to our favorite pizza dough recipe. The best part about it is, it’s ready in 3 hours and yeilds enough dough for 4 pizzas! Mugnaini small batch Pizza Dough

Radicchio, Onion, & Sausage Pizza
Ingredients
• 1lb Italian sausage
• 1 head radicchio, thinly sliced
• ½ red onion, thinly sliced
• Pizza Dough
• Tomato Sauce
• Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
• Salt & pepper to taste
Directions:
1. Place oven rack on lowest position and preheat to 500°F or to the proper setting for your pizza cooking tools.
2. Remove the sausage meat from the casing and break up the sausage in a medium size skittle. Once fully cooked, drain fat from the meat.
3. Wash & thinly slice the radicchio & onion. In the same pan as the sausage, sauté the onion until translucent. Add the radicchio until the radicchio until wilted.
4. On a lightly floured surface, roll out pizza dough to desired size and place dough on sheet (some like to sprinkle cornmeal on baking sheet) or pizza stone.
5. Top pizza with tomato sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese, radicchio & onion mixture, and sausage.
6. Bake until cheese has melted and crust is crisp, about 10 minutes.
7. Top with fresh parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes & mangia!

Looking for a light and fresh salad but over your everyday spring mix or romaine lettuce? Frisée (pronounced “free-ZAY”) is used to refer to a variety of endive with curly, pale-green or yellowish shaggy leaves. Frisée is categorized as an endive which can be puzzling since it looks nothing like Belgium endive. The flavor profile is slightly bitter but much milder than other chicories like radicchio. Frisée adds texture and a pop of flavor to your everyday salad. We’ve paired our frisée with radicchio for the beautiful color contrast! This eye catching salad will have your family and guests coming back for more.

Radicchio, Frisée, and Apple Salad

Salad Ingredients

2 cups Joe’s radicchio

2 cups frisée

1 Fuji apple

1 ounce shaved parmesan cheese (or any hard cheese)

Dressing Ingredients

2 tbs fresh lemon juice

2 tbs extra- virgin olive oil

1 tsp honey

Salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

Combine dressing ingredients in bowl whisking well.

Rinse radicchio and frisée in cold water and pat dry. Then, chop into bite size pieces.

Combine radicchio and frisée together in a large bowl. Top with thinly sliced apples and shaved cheese.

Ready to impress your next dinner guest with a salad that’s presentation & flavor looks like something a chef would prepare on a reality TV show like Top Chef? Well, this salad has all the right components: crunchy fennel, bold tasting radicchio, pepper arugula, nutty Parmesan, and sweet balsamic! And the best part about this salad… it takes less than 20 minutes to put together!

Presentation is key for this salad. So here is a little tip, cut the radicchio head into thin wedges, this way you can fan the wedges of roasted radicchio over the bed of arugula nicely. It will look amazing and everyone will get a little radicchio wedge!

Roasted Radicchio, Shaved Fennel, & Arugula Salad

Ingredients

3 cups of Baby Arugula

1 head of Radicchio

1 head of fennel

½ cup high quality Parmesan- Reggiano cheese

6 tbs extra virgin olive oil

6 tbs balsamic vinegar

Kosher salt & fresh ground black pepper

Directions:

Wash all radicchio, fennel, and arugula.

Cut radicchio in wedges- half-lengthwise, again lengthwise, once more until they are small wedges.

Place on baking sheet & lightly coat in olive & salt & pepper. Put in oven at 350 degrees for 5 mins, then broil low for 3 mins. Remove from oven once the outer edges are chard. Let cool

Thinly slice the fennel bulb and Parmesan cheese – I used a French mandolin slicer.

How to plate: lay the baby arugula on the plate, add the shaved fennel & parmesan, top with the roasted radicchio wedges. Lightly pour balsamic & olive oil.

Who is ready for a BBQ?! We have the perfect side to pair with grilled Chicken or Trip tip. This Radicchio + Works Orzo Rice Salad is the best EVER! It’s a fresh colorful looking salad that will taste well with any BBQ menu or bring it to your next pot luck.

Directions:
1. Cook the pasta al dente in a pot of boiling water with pinch of salt & little olive oil. Drain, transfer to a bowl, and let cool.
2. While the orzo rice is cooking, chop the sun-dried tomatoes (you can either use some of the oil or discard), olives, radicchio, baby arugula, basil, onion. Place in large bowl and set aside.
3. Toast Pine Nuts in a dry skillet over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly, until they start to turn golden brown. Set aside and cool.
4. Once everything is room temperature, combine all ingredients and toss with parmigiana, olive oil, and vinegar.
5. Serve immediately or store in the fridge overnight (all the favors combine).
6. Once ready to serve toss and mangia!

Puntarelle (poon-ta-REL-lay) Puntarelle means “little tips” and traditionally comes from the region of Rome in Italy. Puntarelle is a winter green that belongs to the chicory family and typically eaten raw. Puntarelle is the main ingredient in the Roman salad called Puntarelle alla Romana. This salad is a tender and crisp. The preparation takes a bit of time and forethought as one needs to first trim all of the leaves, thinly slice the shoots, and then soak them in ice cold water which causes them to curl. The salad is served with a dressing of anchovy, garlic, vinegar, and salt, pounded and emulsified with olive oil. Since this blog is titled “Chicory Chicks”, we are going to pair two chicories together.

Prepping Puntarelle

1. Remove the and discard the outer leaves to leave only the shoots.

2. Cut off the white bottoms, and slice the steams in half length and then slice each half into long thin strips, they don’t have to be perfect but I could have sliced them thinner.

3. In a large bowl soak in ice water and let them soak for a 30 min to 1 hour. you will notice them start to curl within 30 mins.

See them curl 🙂

Puntarelle & Radicchio Salad with Honey Lemon Vinaigrette

Ingredients

1 head of Radicchio

1 head of Puntarelle

3 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

Zest of 1 lemon

3 tbsp. lemon juice

1 ½ tsp. Dijon mustard

1 Tbsp. honey

Salt & freshly ground pepper

Directions:

Wash Puntarelle & prepare like in above directions

Wash radicchio & cut into desired size. I like to shred the radicchio to make the radicchio slices match the puntarelle. Place in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl whisk together lemon zest, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, honey, and salt & pepper until combined. While whisking, slowly drizzle in olive oil until vinaigrette is emulsified.

Pour dressing over salad, serve, & mangia!

– Chicory Chicks

Fun fact: my husband calls me Puntarelle because it like the chicory version of Cinderella

Cardone (pronounced car-doan-ee) is always a little odd to talk about because either people love it and start dreaming about the holiday delicacy or they look at you confused and can’t even repeat the word you just said. Just so we are all on the same page…

Cardone, also known as Cardoon or cardi, looks like overgrown celery but tastes like an artichoke heart (delicious!). But before you bite into a stalk of cardone, I would suggest prepping cardone because they have thorns and a tough spine. Prepping cardone is easy, it is pretty much removing the thorns & spine and boiling until tender. Once properly prepared, cardone can be fried, sautéed, baked, or eaten plain.

Cardone Prepping

Needs

1 head of Joe’s Cardone

1 Lemon

Large pot

Knife or peeler

Directions

1. Start with one bunch of Joe’s Premium Cardone and wash under cold water.

2. De-rib the back and remove the tiny thorns on each side of the stalk with a peeler or knife.

3. Cut each stalk into 3- 4” pieces.

4. Place slices in a pot of water with a cut lemon. This helps keeps the cardone from turning brown. Bring water to boil and cook for 30- 40 mins or until tender.

5. Once tender, remove from boiling water and shock in cold water. From here you can use them in any recipe!

Fried Cardone

This is a traditional dish that my grandma makes for the holidays

Ingredients

1 head of Cardone prepped & boiled

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 eggs beaten

Parmesan shredded (optional)

Olive Oil

Directions

Slice cooked cardone pieces in strips long ways, to make more like a fry size

Cover each cardone strip into flour and then drench in the beaten eggs. For an easy trick cut you can place all the cardone in a zip lock bag with flour and shake up. This way all you have to do is dip in the egg as you fry.

Heat up olive oil in pan.

When olive oil is hot, start frying until golden brown, approximately 2 minutes each side.

My name is Francesca and I’m Joe’s, “The man on the box”, oldest granddaughter. As the oldest granddaughter, I have inherited the task of keeping the traditions of the old country alive in my family & be an advocate for Radicchio. Thank goodness I love to cook and love radicchio! 🙂 Chicory Chicks blog will feature recipes and information about radicchio, other Italian chicories and specialties. Let’s get it started!

This recipe isn’t an old family secret, it’s actually inspired by a customer, Liz Maleski. Liz LOVES radicchio and she buys out the store when she shops. Liz emailed us the recipe and everyone in our office cannot stop raving about it! This recipe incorporates many things that we grow: radicchio, figs, and walnuts.

Here are some Tips:

Chop/ cut the radicchio any way you like. I like to slice it thin so that its almost shredded.

I am feeling very special because I am using hand dried figs from my Nono. I recommend quartering them so that they are not much larger than the walnuts.

This Sweet Chicory Chick Salad is festive and colorful, perfect for any occasion!

Welcome to the J. Marchini Farms blog Chicory Chicks! Here you’ll receive an inside look at J. Marchini Farms & Joe’s Premium Brand through events, recipes, and more. If nothing else, we are here to inspire you in the kitchen by delivering fresh, healthy produce and offering suggestions on making Italian specialties.

Why are we the Chicory Chicks?

We know where Chicory comes from: radicchio, treviso, and castelfranco are chicories and are very tasty & nutritious indeed. Don’t know a lot about these Italian specialty chicories? Check out our products page to learn more.

Now how are we coming up with Chick? Well it’s simple, I’m the oldest granddaughter of Joe Marchini, the co-founder & face of Joe’s Premium. My name is Francesca & I enjoy cooking, deep cleaning, talking with produce buyers, and I LOVE radicchio & Italian specialties. Italian way of cooking with fresh seasonal ingredients is so my style. I make pasta with whatever is in my vegetable garden or fridge at least once a week. Sometimes when I’m cooking in the kitchen I wish I could go back in time and cook with my Nonnie (Joe’s Mother).Nonnie always insisted on feeding her grandchildren and great-grandchildren when they stopped by for a quick visit. Her dishes were effortlessly put together with the best homestyle flavors. I hope my recipes here on the Chicory Chicks live up to my Nonnie’s standards.